World of Darkness characters (plus one extra) I’ve created and played

Looks like Portland, the perfect city for creepy crawlies in Dark Urban Fantasy

Some people are curious about the characters I’ve played over the years. As a big fan of White Wolf’s World of Darkness series table top games, I tend to tweet recaps of whatever game I’m currently playing. So I figured I’d do a write up of all the characters I’ve created and played over my three years of playing table top games and talk a bit about the process of making characters.

Baba Hiroki “Baba”– Portland Vampire: The Requiem. Ace. Retired.

Japanese exchange student turned Invictus Mekhet vampire. He’s cute until he opens his

Baba's Scimitar

mouth and lets the world know how ridiculous he sounds. Wields a schimitar which fucking kicks ass. He has a habit of hiding in the shadows, and coming up behind you and slicing your head off. When he’s not fighting, he’s kind of like Portland’s vampire investigator.

Ced Kisema “Ced”– Idaho Werewolf: The Forsaken. Straight. MIA.

Pumped up black werewolf in a pack of whitey-mc-white-white. He’s just traveling through, or so he thinks. He can control fire which makes his pack mates nervous. He’s busy tracking down his brother’s killer who has been spotted in the area. He’s someone who uses a shotgun often.

“Will” – Idaho Werewolf: The Forsaken. Questioning. KIA.

Very white Evangelion fan boy who not only sucks at being a Werewolf but got his head cut off in the most hilarious way possible. He lasted 2 sessions.

Artan Zimwa “Dante” – Portland Mage: The Awakening. Gay. Retired.

An islamic Mastigos English man who awoke later in life after his wife was killed by assailants trying to get to him. Flew to live in Portland to get away. Fell into a drug problem while trying to lead a cabal of fiendish people he hated. He’s cleaned up, makes wine for a living and is trying to revive his best friend…in vain. Dante uses a variety of pistols at his disposal.

A white Southern bell with KKK clan parents, joined the Circle of the Crone as the childer of one of the more powerful Crone vampires in Portland. She takes a sadistic joy out of beating people to death with her nailed bat and has more than on one occasion convinced police officers to shoot black people. She appears sweet but has a real cruel sinister side of her. She’s my experimentation with a low morality antag. Akasha from Queen of the Damned reminds me of her a lot although Akasha was not my inspiration of Kassandra.

The white Acanthus sensitive painter, cooking expert and a closet seamster. He’s a professed loser and a freak who ‘trips over his own feet’. He runs his own art business, peddling portraits of Crescent City and the Redwoods nearby to tourists to make a living. He awoke to his powers while still in high school and as a result dropped out. Eddie is my experimentation of a High Wisdom – Non-fighting Mage. Also, an experiment to see if Eddie can keep his innocence intact in a world of darkness.

The white firefighter Thyrsis playboy who’s been in a calender who goes through relationships like he chugs his beer. His spare time consists on working on that perfect body of his and working through his complicated issues as to why he’s attracted to men. Especially Dave who looks like the spitting image (and personality) of his brother… A hot head with Daddy abandonment issues and a sister that took his seed in his sleep and gave birth to their own reincarnated Grandmother. This family is fucked up. You will read all about it in RPGnetter recaps whenever my ST finishes typing it up. Jason’s weapons of choice is an ax and a shotgun or even just his strength as he’s build like a brick shit house.

I didn't mean Adriadne to end up like Misa from Death Note but it FITS SO WELL!

A Japanese secretive Lady of War and heiress to the Watanabe Pharmaceutical fortune. A world traveler and arranged to marry a well connected with old money but shady character to keep family ties in tact. She’s really a Dhampir, a half-vampire by her father she wants to kill due to a lot of reasons, one of them being that he was the one who arranged her to marry a Demon that rapes and kills with abandon. She wields arm blades and duel katanas and she is probably my most broken character in close range. She’s also proficient in throwing knives and daggers. Her family is Matriarchal, her older sister died and suddenly she’s in line to lead the family which is something she struggles with as she was a party girl back in the day.

An example of Quintus, except towards Christianity. This guy owns a Collegia, the same sort of establishment Quintus runs.

A Roman low-life born with both sexes and raised as male. Raised by the street and an assassin for hire with big dreams of having a monopoly over all of Rome’s assassination contracts. Both in the mortal life and the undead as well. With the special honor of being both sexes, Quintus Cnaus deems it zhe’s own duty to facilitate arguments between men and women. When Quintus started the Assassins Bureau, Quintus frequently employs women assassins. Quintus has an extremely large family and wants nothing more than to expand his family and raise his family’s status. Quintus is a sneaky small knives sort of person although zhe’s expanding into chain weaponry and swords.

An added special:

Madge “?” Hex 6. Still building character.

Madge is a tough ass old woman revolutionary leader of a group against censorship and

Inspired by Amelia Earhart

for the liberty of humans. She was a veteran in WWIV l and is old school as in not use electronics. A chronic smoker, drinker and collector of antiques, she’s someone born in the wrong century. She specializes in making bombs and infiltration of buildings. Madge uses two old revolvers she calls Mary and Jones.

I think I have a fairly good mix of characters of different ethnicities, sexualities and social- economic backgrounds. Although I’m still 7 guys and 5 gals in terms of the sexes, including Quintus in both categories. Most of the characters listed above has some certain aspect, whether it be their name or parts of their personality that are based on real people. Although none of them are direct Xeroxes of these people.

Then there are some that are based off on me:

Because Firefighters are Superheroes, I wanted to be one too

Jason and Eddie are bits and pieces of me with some creative license. I always wanted to be a Firefighter with kickass parkour skills. On the other end of the spectrum there’s Eddie, the sensitive painter seamster. I’m a painter and I admire people who can sew and quilt as its something I could never do. Although they are bits and pieces of what I am or was or wanted to be, they are definitely not me as they have their own personalities and tastes.

I put the effort into making long background stories for my characters as the more effort I put into my characters, the more I get out of the game. I have an active part in shaping the arc of the story. My ST is always open to new ideas and ways to make the game enjoyable for me. Its like I’m actively building my own world and not passively accepting the storyline. Playing table top games, I have to say its a bit better than video games in some respects. If you have a great idea you want to explore and willing to work that into the story, you can gain some insight. Of course, there are some drawbacks such as if you are partnered with some really terrible players then you will be pretty miserable.

Also, its my way of exploring a variety of issues and things I couldn’t possibly do. Like with Quintus, as someone who is living in a society dominated by Pagan beliefs, I certainly play up the aspect of being gifted by Hermaphroditus. Blessed and cursed by the gods, Quintus says a lot. I get to play a person who can get away with a lot of stuff thanks to no technology to detect fingerprints.

As far as how I go about making these characters is kind of a long process. I normally

World of Darkness Character Sheet

take a couple of weeks figuring out a concept I want to explore… Usually the creative juices start pumping when I ask: What kind of family will they have? After some initial emails between my ST for approval, I’ll take the time to fill in the blanks and the character sheet. Sometimes I’ll draw up a list of things I’d like to do for my ST to consider which he always appreciates.

Whenever I make characters now, I always include hooks for my ST to grab and use as fodder to pull my character into the action. Such as the example with Jason the firefighter with an absent father. Its my hook. The ST took that and wrote in “Your absent father suddenly comes back to Crescent City,” the first thing Jason does? Punch him in the face for being the abusive and then absent father he was and threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave Crescent City. Its the hooks, in my opinion, every good player in a table top game should have. Doing so is definitely ST friendly and you feel like you contributed to the game.

Check back next week to read about the house rules we’ve made for Mage: The Awakening’s Crescent City campaign which I plan to incorporate into my Changeling: The Lost campaign based in Eureka.